MSFT to Apple: Yes, your phone is better

As a number of people have already noted, Microsoft’s release of Seadragon for the iPhone — an image-viewing app based on the deep-zoom technology behind the software giant’s Photosynth project — doesn’t just seem like an admission that the iPhone is better than any other mobile out there: Microsoft product…

As a number of people have already noted, Microsoft’s release of Seadragon for the iPhone — an image-viewing app based on the deep-zoom technology behind the software giant’s Photosynth project — doesn’t just seem like an admission that the iPhone is better than any other mobile out there: Microsoft product manager Alex Daley comes right out and says as much in an interview with Todd Bishop of the blog Tech Flash:

“The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit),” Daley explained. “Most phones out today donâ€™t have accelerated graphics in them The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do. I couldnâ€™t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it.”

For me, this is one of the biggest differences between the iPhone and any other mobile device (with the possible exception of the Sony PlayStation Portable). Yes, the apps are fun and the GUI is cool and the accelerometer and auto screen rotation and all of that are great, but the way it handles images — including photos, Web browsing and even games — is just light-years ahead of anything else. And Seadragon, for all the crap that Microsoft gets from a lot of people, including me, is pretty damn cool (although the name seems a little too consciously imitative of Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.).

I downloaded the app and in about two minutes I was zooming in on ancient maps from the Library of Congress and then satellite imagery of Toronto, which it picked up as my current location using the GPS in the iPhone. The speed with which it managed to do all of that, and on a mobile device, is pretty amazing — it was even faster than Google Maps on my desktop. And I can’t imagine doing it on any other device than the iPhone.

As Mozilla-esque as the name sounds, I thought I would just mention that the name in fact originates from a company Microsoft acquired, Seadragon Software. Seadragon Software, is in fat behind the technology used in the iPhone application, zooming. Thought I would just mention that.

Of course the iPhone is better! Do Microsoft even come close with their soooo slow WinMobile? No way! I think the list of iPhone games like in http://www.ipfun.org says it all, I am addicted to that site and finding new games every single day. I do however think that both Microsoft and Apple has to do with the new bully that cam to the neighborhood, his name is Google android and he his literally going to rock the ground under their feet.

How ironic. PC fans tout all the games available for for Window. Mac users 'poo-poo' that as irrelevant. Now, iPhone fanboys tout all he games for the iPhone as proof of it's greatness…

As a Mac and iPhone user, I'm becoming extremely tired of this 'bash and bang' mentality! Good grief! Enjoy what you want and buy and stop trying to degrade others choices! Life is too short! Don't we have enough conflicts in life without adding more? Oh well, I'm off to download another iPhone game to my fantastic, amazing, wonderful, outstanding, impossible-to-duplicate user-experience, Earthshaking design iPhone… all the while drooling over my fabulous iMac (I need to get some kind of keyboard protecter…) ;-P LOL!

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I'm a Toronto-based writer, and this is where I write about online media, technology and other interesting things I come across on the Web. I am a former senior writer at Gigaom, a former blogger, columnist, reporter and social-media editor at the Globe and Mail and a former writer with the Financial Times of Canada.